Comment by dylan604
Comment by dylan604 a day ago
How is someone writing an article about Android source code node nerdy enough to know what a Tricoder is? I don’t buy it
Comment by dylan604 a day ago
How is someone writing an article about Android source code node nerdy enough to know what a Tricoder is? I don’t buy it
Funny, when I was in my 20s and not British, I knew what a Dalek was because it was just part of the zeitgeist. Tricoders are frequently mentioned as one of the life imitating art type of things that modern tech is striving to take from sci-fi to IRL. I had never even seen an episode of Dr Who, but I was familiar with it because of all the other sci-fi/nerdy stuff I was into. Ironically, I did know what someone wearing an H on their forehead meant from watching Red Dwarf, but that’s a tangent. It just seems like a strange Venn diagram where source code android and Star Trek tricoder do not intersect would be a very odd diagram
I think you hit the nail on the head there, you and the author are simply from different cultural zeitgeists. I also remember Star Trek and Dr Who being a big deal, but I was entirely too young to care. And I continue not to care, since I don't watch live action shows much. Never seen an episode of Friends or Game of Thrones either for example. Just a starkly different generation and subculture.
Indeed. There is such an immense amount of media that is produced from decade to decade that nobody can ever know everything and understand "all" the references. Things that may seem like "things everyone know about" vary wildly between location and year ranges, and in the recent decades with the Internet there are just so many subcultures that all could be classified as "nerdy" but which lack a lot of overlap.
I suppose I'm too young to have watched Star Trek when it was really popular (and have all sorts of other blind spots when it comes to TV shows and other media even for people my age), but I've definitively heard about it. And I know some other references to it like Spock and the Vulcan salute, but the Tricorder had completely missed me until now.
Also, with something like GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_I I could pretty easily tell it was a reference to something fictional (in that case Star Wars) since there is obviously no celestial body with that name. But with the Tricorder I was looking to actually make sure it's not some kind of actually real but vestigial hardware sensor thing that Android might have supported in the 00s, tangentially related to the Tricorder that was on Star Trek. I have certainly witnessed stranger coincidences.
Like Android still has functionality in the API for supporting trackballs, which I know used to be on some really early Android phones. So if that had been among the list as "there's this joke input device called a 'trackball' in the API, implying there are phones with a big physical ball you can roll around to move a cursor on the screen", that would be quite silly. Because it was a real and used thing in the past, even though nowadays it's more of a legacy feature (though might be a bad example as I assume you can connect input devices over USB or Bluetooth that may be treated as a trackball by Android).
> the other sci-fi/nerdy stuff I was into
I guess that’s your answer. People have different interests and as such there’s a virtually unlimited number of culture combinations that people can be into. And people can have white spots in places that are surprising to others, there’s only so much time.
The age makes sense, but Swedes are definitely into Star Trek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.P.O.C.K
My fellow old person, Deep Space Nine came out 32 years ago. It's not something the nerds of today need to know. All these great sources of nerd allusions will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
While I found it surprising at first I don't think it should be. Star Trek really doesn't seem to be as big as it used to be.
> Star Trek really doesn't seem to be as big as it used to be.
Hint: it was never big outside of the USA. If anything, Internet and the Hollywood reboots is the way most people outside of the USA learnt about it.
Also try to find Europe in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_influence_of_Star_Tre...
Are you sure?
I'm Italian and we had Star Trek (all the films, all the shows, many of the books), and apparently the Star Trek Italian Club[0] was funded in 1982. I think Spock and Kirk were quite familiar to most people, and for sure as a nerd in the '00s everybody understood the joke of showing Bill Gates as a Borg on Slashdot.
[0] https://stic.it/
> , and for sure as a nerd in the '00s everybody understood the joke of showing Bill Gates as a Borg on Slashdot.
Everybody, Gates and Slashdot in one sentence.
Very big in Germany imo. I came back from school and always watched back to back TNG and MacGyver. TNG and DS9 were big and aired nationally. My father grew up with Kirk & Spock and most people who were children in that generation and had access to a TV know the show, because there was not much else on TV. He's not a nerd at all :)
There's a Swedish Star Trek-themed band that has been continually active since 1988 and are popular enough that they still do festivals in Sweden, Germany and other European countries every year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.P.O.C.K
Adding to the comments: Not an American, but like others here watched TNG every day after school, and TOS before that. Many other people my age did, for example my wife.
BTW, we have watched with our sons all of TNG and DS9 for the last 3 years, and our eldest is now deeply familiar with Star Trek as a result. Very few of his peers are familiar with it, though.
I was never a big Star Trek fan, but here in Sweden growing up I watched episodes of The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine when they happened to be on. There definitely always seemed to be some Star Trek series running in a decent TV slot and everyone seemed aware of it - even if its popularity was eclipsed by that of Star Wars.
From friends and family in Belgium it seems it was somewhat bigger there.
> Hint: it was never big outside of the USA.
Really? I must have grown up in an alternative universe. Star Trek TOS and TNG were aired on our local TV station in the 80s and 90s, IIRC even in the afternoon. I would be extremely surprised if I'd meet a 30+ person who grew up here (European country) and didn't know Star Trek.
Probably because it was dormant for a long time. And then when it was brought back, it was brought back by people who have no clue what made Star Trek good so it has largely sucked.
With the benefit of hindsight, I'd say that impression is more because every series is very different. TOS and TAS may have been similar to TNG seasons 1 and 2, but TNG got more thoughtful as it went on; DS9 was a very different show to both TOS and TNG, with long-term continuity and changes (beyond casting) that stuck, and far more shades of grey and where outright evil came with a smile and a charismatic speech rather than being a puddle of psychic oil; VOY had almost no continuity, making it the polar opposite of DS9, but most of the characters were interesting enough for a space soap opera; ENT was derided by many when it came out, because all the main plot arcs made no sense and they kept introducing old fan favourites that didn't make sense contextually because series set in the show's future had yet to meet the Borg, the Ferengi, etc. And while I've never seen Prodigy, I'm aware that was trying for a very different approach to exploring the cannon and had its own story to tell.
And famously, only the even-numbered films are any good (which doesn't mean all even films are good, e.g. Nemesis).
In this light: DIS throwing away an interesting premise and then going nuts; PIC being three seasons of "why did the scriptwriters put the Borg everywhere, when the main story is androids vs. Romulans, Q, and warcrimes(*?) against changelings leading to changeling terrorism?"; and the very much more pew-pew-lasers action films of Kelvin**… none of this is particularly shocking.
What's nice (for people like me) is that SNW and LD are both well-written and thoughtful — but again, very different shows.
SNW feels like it is trying to be the best of TOS, TNG, and DS9, even if it does have a bit of fan service with insufficiently justified presence of Kirk (James, the other one is fine).
LD is very very silly, but it works for me — not as a canonical set of events (Mariner is even less suitable a personality for a ship officer than is Burnham, and in the same way I can head-cannon all Q episodes as "Q is actually Barclay on the holodeck having a power fantasy", most of the main four cast feel to me like students LARPing trek on a holodeck), but rather I like it because the tries to "yes, and…" the show's existing cannon in ways that mostly work and the characters are fundamentally decent to each other 95% of the time (and when not, justified).
* Perhaps "crimes against humanity" would be a closer take, or whatever the term should be in a not-just-humans universe
** and Section 31 whose critical response is so low that I forgot it existed rather than watch it, and only remembered the existence of when looking at Wikipedia to check if Nemesis was even or odd
I think that while each show was different, all the Star Trek shows from TOS to VOY had a certain feel to them that made them feel consistent. Yes TOS was more swashbuckling and DS9 was more interested in continuity and shades of grey, but they all were similar in that they were thoughtful shows where teams of competent professionals solved problems in the context of a generally positive vision for humanity, all while trying to offer moral dilemmas for the viewer to wrestle with.
But modern Star Trek is by and large nothing like that. The Abrams movies I'm ok with, because to be honest the old Trek movies had plenty of "it's just a fun action movie" too. But DIS and PIC both seem to positively revel in a pessimistic vision of the future where everyone sucks. Where we once got stories where the writers were smart enough to let viewers draw their own conclusions and apply them to real life (mostly, there were preachy episodes too), the modern shows are a blatant soapbox for the writers to preach to us about their views on the world. Where we once had teams of competent professionals using their skills to solve problems, now we have characters who act like children and only know how to apply "hit it real hard" as a solution.
It is a very damning statement that the best (and for a while, only) modern show to live up to Star Trek is The Orville, which isn't even a Star Trek show! But say what you will about him, Seth MacFarlane gets Star Trek and he loves it (unlike Alex Kurtzman, may he never get another TV series). So he made something which (comedy tone aside) could easily be a successor to the Star Trek shows of old.
The only exception to the dismal trend is SNW, at least the first season. I haven't gotten around to watching more yet, but that show was what CBS should've been making all along instead of the garbage that was DIS and PIC. Suddenly we are explorers in the positive future, we are competent professionals again... it's actually a worthy Star Trek for once. I would say I think that some of the casting choices aren't always great (their Kirk is... not suited to the role), and I would enjoy if they could move further away from the action show tropes and have more thoughtful writing (though not preachy please, I'll take dumb action over the writers preaching to me). That is why I said Star Trek has largely sucked, because SNW is an exception. But in general I have felt like the current creative staff doesn't understand Star Trek at all and can't make a good show to save their lives.
> But modern Star Trek is by and large nothing like that. The Abrams movies I'm ok with, because to be honest the old Trek movies had plenty of "it's just a fun action movie" too. But DIS and PIC both seem to positively revel in a pessimistic vision of the future where everyone sucks. Where we once got stories where the writers were smart enough to let viewers draw their own conclusions and apply them to real life (mostly, there were preachy episodes too), the modern shows are a blatant soapbox for the writers to preach to us about their views on the world. Where we once had teams of competent professionals using their skills to solve problems, now we have characters who act like children and only know how to apply "hit it real hard" as a solution.
I've not noticed a difference in the preaching, TBH, but otherwise yes.
And also that PIC took many interesting side characters from TNG, and used them as redshirts. Maddox, Hugh, Icheb, Shelby… and both Picard and Data in season 1 — and worse for both. Data because Data was (a) brought back the wrong way (should've been him in B4's body properly and not the simulation), and (b) that version of him wasn't given an appropriate reason for seeking his own death, and they really could've done it quite easily by writing that Data to have a plot point of ~ "I don't want my friends to die, I will choose death again to save them". Picard because it was such a missed opportunity, not only to give Patrick Stewart the same makeup that Brent Spiner had had for all those years, but also because Q said he still had a synthetic body in season 2 and yet they had him getting a "neural stabiliser" for "his brain".
Star Wars and Star Trek mean very little to people outside "Western" countries. If you go to China, most people won't understand a thing about Star Wars, including computer nerds/science fiction fans. And they live their life just fine.
Don't assume certain things that happened during a certain period are universal to everybody.
China I would expect not to know about Western cultural phenomena. But Star Trek references made it into Japanese animation like the Daicon IV opening (1983) and Dirty Pair (1985?) and quite a few others. It was a globally popular series.
Not every nerdy person is into Star Trek?
Star Wars is imo way more mainstream than Star Trek these days (especially with Disney pumping it), but even then there are tons of people in their 20s working in tech who haven’t seen it and have no interest in it.
I don’t think there was more than one person on my previous Android team who would’ve gotten the Tricoder reference, and I was the youngest person there (29 years old at the time; learned about Tricoder literally just from this thread myself).
If you picked a random person working on Android source code and asked me to guess whether they know about Tricoder (without knowing any additional info about them), I would have decisively guessed “no”.
About a decade ago I started watching Star Wars movies for the first time, when there were "only" 6 movies to finish. But by then there were already 12+ Star Trek movies plus TV series. I decided that I'd "choose" Star Wars, and that was enough for me. I am sure Star Trek is a fascinating universe, and I see it mentioned all the time, but I don't think I care about it enough to ever go into that world.
Yeah, pretty much the same for me.
Plus, Star Wars universe just felt way more interesting and fascinating to me than Star Trek as a kid.
Star Wars felt like knights and wizards and jet fighter pilots and heroic adventures in space, Star Trek felt like “adults doing boring adult things… but in space”. Not trying to dismiss ST, clearly it has a lot of appeal to tons of people, but it had zero appeal to me as a child.
It also helped that SW universe had some of my favorite games at that time, like SW:Demolition (vehicle combat genre, similar to Twisted Metal), Jedi Knight series, Knights of The Old Republic, etc.
I think it depends on if you lean more towards fantasy or sci-fi.
Star Wars is space fantasy. Star Trek is science fiction.
I’m not saying one is better than the other, but they appeal to different personalities.
I personally struggle to get in to fantasy, whether that is Star Wars, DnD, or fantasy video games. I’d much prefer to have a court room debate about ethics in the future.
The Star Wars vs Star Trek debate has always confused me as you are comparing two totally different genres.
Right? It could be an attempt at humor, but it could also be someone who is naive of culture before 2003. I lost some respect for the author at that point...
This is so american/age centric please reconsider dispensing respect based on who watched the same TV shows as you growing up
They are in their early 20s and not American¹. Why is that so hard to grasp?
1: https://voxelmanip.se/about/